Love, Sludge, and Dungarees
by MyPhoenixLament
Summary: In which Malfoy changes species twice, Hermione does some rescuing, and a whole lot of mirrors get broken. Written for the dmhgficexchange on LJ.
1. Part 1

**Author's Notes**: Written for the last round of the dmhgficexchange on LiveJournal under the username peskywhistpaw. My recipient asked for humor and the Grey's Anatomy quote, "OK, here it is. Your choice, it's simple, her or me. And I'm sure she's really great. But [x], I love you. In a really, really big, pretend to like your taste in music, let you eat the last piece of cheesecake, hold a radio over my head outside your window, unfortunate way that makes me hate you, love you. So pick me. Choose me. Love me." This is part one of two. If there are any odd typos, it's because this website is not cooperating with me right now.

* * *

><p><strong><strong>Love, Sludge,<br>and Dungarees****

**Part 1**

The trouble with being stuck in a pit with the man who was probably in love with you was that there was no trouble at all, really—except if that man happened to have been turned into a frog. It was all the more troublesome if you happened to have only just realized that you, in fact, loved the man back, but couldn't very well _tell_ him as much, what with him being a frog, because that would just be undignified. You couldn't even _kiss_ him, because only the naive lunatics of fairy stories would logically consider doing so. And besides, you'd probably frighten the poor amphibious man to death with your great, smacking lips descending upon his head like so many other carnivorous creatures just waiting to slurp him up. The man's brain was even smaller than usual—or perhaps more appropriately housed, one couldn't be sure. There was no telling what he could and could not comprehend. All you could do safely without causing damage to said man (short term, terror; long term, death) or to yourself (utter humiliation in both the short _and_ long terms) was give your frog-man a sympathetic look and make sure he didn't leave your sight. Of course, you had to be careful not to look at the man you loved—who was a frog—too lustily, otherwise he might get the wrong idea, and think you wanted to eat him, which—

Hermione Granger shook her head. A handful of leaves, fresh and green, dislodged themselves from her wild tangle of hair to seek more civilized accommodations. Unfortunately, they landed around a small green and brown frog, who wobbled angrily until the leaf on his back fell off—he ignored the others. The frog seemed to glare at Hermione, but did not say anything snide or reproachful.

This, of course, was because he was a frog.

Frogs couldn't talk. _Draco Malfoy_ had been able to talk; but he had lost that privilege about two hours ago when he had gone from _homo sapiens sapiens_ to _rana temporaria_—or, the European Common Frog. (Hermione recited these names in her head because logic was calming. Or it should have been, but perhaps was only having a sort of Placebo effect on her mind, which—

Hermione shook her head again.)

"I don't _know_ how to turn you back," she told the frog for the hundred and second time. ("Also," she added mentally for the ninety-seventh, "I _am _in love with you. In case you were curious.")

The frog gave a shuddery sort of croak and turned his back to her. Sighing, Hermione leaned against the curving, earthen wall of the pit. This—_situation_—was not her fault. The fact that Malfoy had turned into a frog only a few moments after she had discovered how she felt about him was the work of coincidence. Coincidence, and his associate Bad Timing.

Although, to be fair, it had been Malfoy who had broken the mirror.

* * *

><p>"That's not my department," Hermione told the man who had just upended a sack of glittering fragments onto her desk. Her tone was clipped—a bit rude, because she'd been having a bad day, and felt entitled to it. She didn't offer directions to the proper department as she would normally have done. She didn't even glance up to see <em>who <em>had made the misguided delivery; she only assumed it was a man because she had caught a brief glimpse of hairy arm before it had receded with the burlap sack.

"I was told to come here," said the man. His voice was unfamiliar, though the annoyance in his tone matched hers. "Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures."

Hermione hastily apologized, though she was still disinclined to believe that the man was in the right place. Unless the broken thing on her desk had once been a house-elf, there was little help her position allowed her to offer. She looked at the man, who uncannily reminded her of a Viking with his broad shoulders and braided blonde beard, and waited. When he didn't speak again, she coughed.

"I'm sorry," she said again, "but _how_ may I help you?"

He pointed to the shards. "This mirror," he began, "was goblin-wrought, five centuries old. It was broken this afternoon. I've been told you can fix it."

Hermione stared at him. "I'm sorry," she said for the third time, "but I—"

"The Restorative Bog-Seal Charm. That's what it needs."

"Oh."

"And I hear you're the one who invented it."

This was true, though she didn't know how he had come across such information. The charm was public knowledge, but the identity of its creator was not. She had had far too much attention from the media after the War; as much as the greater part of her yearned for scholastic recognition, the rest of her simply wanted to be left alone. She was not a celebrity, yet she had been treated like one; though she desired praise at her most fundamental levels, enough was enough. Things had only just died down when she had been examining Harry's two-way mirror, and had been struck by an idea of how to repair it—magical mirrors being heretofore irreparable.

Hermione paused a moment. "I am," she affirmed hesitantly. "The charm involves a complicated process, however—rather more ritualistic than is customary, because of the accompanying salve. And," she added in the same breath, hoping to provide further discouragement, "it requires the assistance of the person who broke the mirror in question."

The man waved his hand dismissively. "That's not a problem. He's waiting outside."

That was it, then. She could think of no other excuse. Hermione took another look at the shards on her desk; now that she had been told what they were, she felt foolish for not recognizing them at once. Goblin-made mirrors always more resembled opaque diamonds than glass when they were shattered. There were also distinct lines of magic crisscrossing along the backs of some of the pieces, signs of the latticework foundation originally put into place by the goblins to all but ensure the mirror would be unbreakable. Whoever had broken this mirror was very clumsy, indeed.

Hermione tore her eyes from the former mirror and nodded at the man. "I'd be glad to help you, then."

Once she had got his name and information—Sven Bracegirdle of Peebles—jotting it down on the proper notepad, she let him lead her out to where the mirror-breaker waited. Sven warmed to her considerably after she agreed to fix the mirror, falling into amiable conversation as they headed to the lifts. By the time they reached the Atrium, Hermione had become quite an expert on Muffins, Tuppence, and Bluebell, Sven's beloved pet kneazles. She was admittedly a bit relieved to see the tall fireplaces arching on either side of them, and began to look about searchingly for Sven's mirror-breaker.

Sven, however, proceeded directly to the nearest fireplace. Puzzled, Hermione followed. Where was 'outside,' exactly? She had thought it meant outside her office, and when that had proved to be untrue, she had thought it meant here. Surely, Sven had not banished the mirror-breaker into exile in some remote location. But the only clue she received was yet another proclamation of "Outside!" when Sven stepped into the fireplace. She was fairly certain that that wasn't how it worked, but decided it was best to follow him, wand at the ready.

To her astonishment, she turned up inside a phone booth, her shoulder jammed uncomfortably under the telephone. With a jolt, she realized that it was _the_ phone booth. She hadn't known it was possible to get out through the visitor's entrance. Sven seemed to know an awful lot of things he shouldn't—Hermione would have to talk to Kingsley about security issues.

Out the windows, she could see Sven waiting for her next to a lamppost, which had a little white dog tied to it. There was nobody else in sight.

Hermione carefully extricated herself from the booth, brushed off her robes, and proceeded toward Sven.

"Where—?" she began, but as soon as she started speaking, the little white dog began to pull on its lead, staring at her with bug eyes she didn't think were at all natural. After a moment, it moved to gnawing desperately on its lead.

Hermione tried to take the lead from its mouth; the dog nearly bit her, but then seemed to think better of it. As a consequence of almost attempting to take her hand off, however, the lead fell out of its mouth, and Hermione snatched it up at once.

At a questioning look, Sven merely shrugged. "I didn't want him to get away."

Hermione blinked, then relaxed. Surely, _surely_, he could not mean what she thought he meant.

"This dog broke your mirror?" she asked hopefully. A couple walking by on the street eyed Sven's beard curiously.

Sven hesitated, as if suddenly abashed. "Well... it's like I said. I... didn't want him to get away. He seemed awfully eager to run off once he'd damaged my property."

Hermione gaped at him. "Oh my—!" She checked to make sure the street was empty—the couple had disappeared around the corner. Then, she crouched down, and in one fluid motion, she waved her wand over the dog, detecting the counter-curse at the same time she cast it. She thought she heard Sven mutter, "Don't let him off his lead," but she didn't pay him any mind.

In a matter of seconds, the dog had given a gasp—but that was because it was no longer a dog. It was a young man with pale, mussed blonde hair, who, because he was still hunched on all fours, had his pointed nose nearly touching Hermione's. His equally pointed chin had an untidy shadow of scruff that seemed odd, though she could not explain why. She was about to ask the man whether he was all right, when he raised his eyes to meet hers. They were grey, and very, very sullen.

Hermione gasped, and shot backward at the same time the man did. It did not work well for either of them: Hermione landed flat on her rump, and Draco Malfoy nearly choked himself to death with the lead that was still buckled round his neck. He clawed at it desperately while Hermione attempted to form the proper words.

For once, all she managed was a horrified, "You!"

She could feel her face heating up in a blush as she scrambled to her feet. Malfoy had managed to unclasp the lead, but a firm grip on his upper arm, courtesy of Sven, stopped him from escaping. His own cheeks were flushed angrily, and something flashed in his eyes briefly that she did not quite catch as he glanced at her. She supposed it was probably loathing. He redirected this loathing at Sven, which suited Hermione just fine.

In the hopes of regaining her professional dignity, she attempted to keep her voice calm. "Sven," she asked, "am I correct in presuming that it was this _man_ who broke your mirror?"

Instead of Sven, it was Malfoy who answered. "_I_ didn't break _anything_," he insisted hotly.

"That. Is. A. Lie," Sven growled.

"Not _on purpose_, then!"

"That doesn't change the fact that you broke it!"

Still rather in shock, the only thing Hermione thought to ask was, "What on earth were you doing in _Peebles_?"

At least it got the two men to stop arguing.

"What the hell is Peebles?" Malfoy demanded. "How can I have been there when I've never even heard of it?"

"Then where were you when you broke the mirror?"

"I didn't break the—"

"Essex," Sven told her. "I was in Essex with the mirror. I'd stopped on my way to Diagon Alley, where it was to be cleaned. I had it leaned against a bench, when _he_"—he jabbed his free hand at Malfoy, who flinched—"came trotting by, careless as you please, and caught his fancy coat on the frame. He tried to pull himself free, but he only pulled the mirror with him."

Essex, unfortunately, made sense. It was in Essex, after all, that Malfoy had a flat. Hermione knew this because her own flat was, regrettably, the one next to it. Malfoy had been scandalized—she had seen the look on his face—that his wealth and familial prestige had landed him in a place which Hermione could afford, and Hermione had been disgusted that, after seven years of fighting dark wizards—and surviving—her good luck had deposited her in a place where she might have to do laundry with one. They had to share a _wall_, for goodness sake!

In the beginning, they had done everything within their power—which was, admittedly, quite a lot—to get the other to move out. Malfoy had had large parties—or at least, played loud music; she had never actually seen anyone go in or out of his flat—and she had been sure to brew the most foul-smelling potions she could think of in hopes that his pointy little nose would curl right up into his head. She also knew for a fact that Crookshanks had peed on Malfoy's welcome mat, though she'd had nothing directly to do with that. (Crookshanks was simply a good judge of character.)

When it had appeared that neither was going to relent—and they had received several complaints from other residents—they began to expertly and judiciously ignore one another. Hermione knew Malfoy's daily routine as surely as Malfoy knew hers, and, without discussing it, they had adjusted these routines so that they would only _just_ miss seeing each other in the corridor. (As Hermione washed her clothes by wand, and Malfoy probably did not wash his own clothes at all, an encounter in the laundry room was not an issue.) In case they happened to need to run errands at the same time, they had an unofficial exit strategy, in which Hermione would take the stairway to the right, and Malfoy would take the lift to the left. This was only ever a problem on weekends, because Hermione was at the Ministry nearly all day during the week. She and Malfoy did not even have to speak, and for the past two years, their flowing, wordless dance had carried them through life in a more or less satisfactory manner. There had been that one time, but Hermione could not—_would _not—speak of it, not even to herself; she was quite happy to put it on her list of things to ignore, as a nicely indented bullet point beneath her neighbor's name.

Yes. She had always told herself she was quite happy.

"Essex," Hermione repeated, frowning. "Yes, all right. Well, Malfoy, you and I had better get started." She considered, then added, "Oh, and you can let go of his arm now, Sven."

* * *

><p>"I don't see why you need me for this, Granger," Malfoy drawled a week later. The terrible squelching of his boots in the mud defused much of the viciousness in his tone; the fact that he was wearing dungarees in addition to muddy Wellingtons made him about has harmless as a kitten.<p>

"I need you because you're the idiot who broke the mirror," she shot back—and not for the first time.

"So you've told me," he squelched at her, "but it isn't as if you've explained anything. _I_ don't know a _thing _about what we're looking for, which makes me quite useless for your little excursion."

"Useless?" she mused. "Oh yes, normally I'd agree with you. Unfortunately, as you're the great klutz who—"

"_Granger_, I swear to—"

"You've got to pick certain plants to go in the salve. You've got to right what you've wronged. It's part of the magic."

Malfoy snorted, swatting at a fly. "It sounds too moralizing to be part of a spell—exactly like something a self-righteous Gryffindor would think up. Oh, wait." He pretended to have had some sort of epiphany.

"You've no right to criticize me _or _to complain. You wouldn't even help me lay out the mirror. Not that I would have trusted you with such a task, anyway..." She recalled the painstaking care of the past week, in which she had labored to piece the thousands of mirror shards back together on her living room floor.

"Right, because putting together puzzles in the playroom with Granger is something I've _always_ dreamed of." Malfoy squelched a bit more.

Hermione nearly screamed. She whirled around, jabbing her wand at him "The least you could do is walk a bit more quietly!"

Malfoy threw up his thin hands. "We are in a _bog_, Granger! My feet could get sucked into the mud and stuck forever at any _second_! We could be attacked from all sides by wild animals! _Noise_"—he drew out the word in a drawl—"is probably the only thing keeping us safe from wolves."

"Wolves?" Hermione snorted. "What are you, Little Smug Riding Hood? Malfoy, there haven't been any wolves here for centuries."

"What do you call a werewolf, then?"

"A werewolf, you impossible prat! Besides, the next full moon isn't for another fortnight. And we're only going to be here during the daytime. No need to run home screaming to Mummy. The most we'll see is a dugbog or a bowtruckle. Now..." She shot a Silencing Charm at his boots, smiled to herself, and pulled a piece of parchment from her pocket. Seeing Malfoy in filthy dungarees like a common farmhand was almost enough—_almost_—to keep her from wanting to wring his neck.

She was wearing a similar outfit herself, but then, she reasoned, she had always cared much less for her appearance. Instead, she cared a great deal for practicality, and having to tramp through a marshy landscape for several hours was hardly an occasion for neglecting it. Besides, their clothing was magically enhanced, as well, to suit their needs. The dungarees wouldn't feel wet unless completely submerged, and Hermione had spelled the boots not to sink too deeply into the water or mud. Malfoy's fears of being dragged below the surface and drowned—or whatever it was he was frightened of now—were completely unfounded.

Absently, she rubbed at a streak of mud that was drying across her cheek. At least it wasn't terribly hot out, though the air had periods of stagnancy, much like the patches of water that stretched around them like puddling leopard spots. Everything around them would appear dead and still, frozen in time, until suddenly a gust of wind would rush through to shake the weeds and grasses, or a dragonfly would skim down along the water and propel the bog into motion. The trees across the water seemed a constant painted backdrop until she happened to squint at them for a bit; then she noticed the delicate swaying of each individual branch, the fluttering of the leaves that lined them.

Hermione could not deny that she enjoyed field work. She was best in a library or at her desk, of course, taking notes from a stack of books in some quest or other for truth. Years of adventures with Harry and Ron, however, had honed her skills in the wide open world, where she could find practical applications for her knowledge. It was not uncommon for someone to find her gathering her own potion ingredients—the method was important, she always said—nor was it particularly odd that a vein of research might take her to some interesting location. For a time, the Department had even put her in one of the squads responsible for tracking down injured—and often dangerous—magical creatures because of her quick mind when situations turned difficult. She did not have the physical reflexes of the rest of the squad, but she had learned to make quick, logical decisions that were just as good, often better.

Although, truth be told, she was rather relieved to be put to more exclusively mental work. She hoped to be a part of the legal section of the Department one day, a different sort of public defender. That was a ways off, though. She was only roughly a few years out of Hogwarts, and still had much to prove.

Blinking, Hermione realized she had been staring at the piece of parchment in her hand without actually reading it for several moments. She seemed to be doing that a lot lately. She would almost call it daydreaming, except that it wasn't. One of her coworkers had also informed her that she had been sighing a lot lately. She would have to work on resharpening her focus.

While she was lost in her thoughts, Malfoy had been awfully quiet—as far as she could tell. He had not made one rude remark about her distractedness, and had not even grumped at her to move along. How peculiar.

She turned around, just in time to see Malfoy point his wand defiantly at his boots and mutter, "_Finite Incantatem_." There was a moment in which he simply looked at her smugly, pleased with himself for getting rid of her Silencing Charm and once more able to be as noisy as he wished. Then, with a horrible splash, his boots gave way, and he dropped into the water like a stone. The fool had also removed the spell that kept him from sinking.

For an odd moment, Hermione felt her heart drop with him; she felt it drop from somewhere in her throat, travel past her spine, and come crashing down somewhere around her toes. She did not think to pick it up. For after that moment, she felt only inexplicable terror. The terror only grew when Malfoy's white-blonde head disappeared under the muddy water, and did not reappear again, not even when she felt that several hours had passed, though it must only have been seconds.

Seconds too long. Was this really happening? Hermione affirmed to herself that it was, and then did the only logical thing she could think of. She shoved her wand and parchment into her pocket, quickly squelched over to where she could see a few indolent bubbles rising to the surface, and planted her feet at the edges of the deep but narrow pool. The boots prevented her from sinking as Malfoy had done. Thus positioned, she plunged both hands into the muck. The ends of her hair dipped into it after her. If she couldn't find him, she would take her wand, and—

There! Her fingers had brushed his. Squatting down, she searched blindly until her hands found his wrists, and she grasped onto them as tightly as she could; she felt him return the gesture. Knees trembling, heart pounding, she gave a great pull. The water lapped at her boots angrily, and the mud squelched to its heart's content, but slowly, surely, Malfoy was rising. He jerked slightly in her hands, probably kicking his feet to propel him upward. Eventually, something vaguely head-shaped broke the surface. It gave a wheezing cough.

Hermione was almost squatting now. Her strength was giving out—it was rather a miracle she had pulled Malfoy as far as she had. She could envision herself whisking him from danger, flinging him from the water and onto her back as if he were no more than a sack of potatoes. She envisioned it, but could not make it happen. Not quite. Malfoy's shoulders were sinking back into the muck; his kicking and struggling had begun to make her lose her grip. She could feel herself sinking after him, the charm on her boots struggling to hold up so much weight.

For the next few seconds, she was more frightened than before—yet all the more determined. She let him go. She grabbed her wand.

"_LEVICORPUS!_"

Before he could give one more good kick, Malfoy shot into the air suspended by one ankle, so covered in mud and grime it appeared as if he were made of it. He dripped globs of greenish slime into the water below, which was now almost still. Hermione grabbed one of his flailing arms. A hillock rose out of the water nearby, green, beautiful, and safe, and she dragged Malfoy toward it as though he were some sort of perverse balloon. As soon as her feet hit the sloping grass, she reversed the spell, and Malfoy came floating down beside her, as gracefully as could be. Some of the grass was still rather bedewed from the morning mist, so she yanked fistfuls of it from the ground, and began wiping at his mud-covered face. All the while, Malfoy sputtered indignantly at being 'scrubbed by a mad woman with weeds.' Apparently, he had got over the shock of his nearly drowning.

Hermione, however, had not. With determinedly pursed lips, she continued to scrub until she had got the mud out from about his eyes, nose, mouth, and ears. (Malfoy quieted a bit while she was near his eyes.) A well aimed _Scourgify _took care of the rest. She might have used it initially, but there were some things—more delicate things—for which she felt a Muggle touch was appropriate.

She didn't want to accidentally blind him with a cleaning spell, after all—who knew all the filthy things he had seen that the spell might try to wash away?

There was a cut on his cheek that still bled lightly. Hermione wasn't much of a Healer, so she decided to simply dab at it a bit with the grass, to get out the mud.

Then she stopped.

And laughed.

The laughter was rather shaky, but it was enough to make Malfoy scowl. "What?" he demanded.

Hermione shook her head, still chuckling. "Sorry, but..."

He swiped his finger across his cheek, bringing it in front of his face. It was smeared with a mixture of blood and mud. He glowered at Hermione, a bit chagrined.

"Wonderful," he drawled. She noted that his voice was a little shaky, too. "It seems I've gone to meet death, and come out the other side a Mudblood."

Hermione shrugged. "It's a fair trade."

Malfoy was quiet for while, picking at the bits of grass that stuck to his skin. Hermione was suddenly exhausted; whatever strength she had retained deserted her completely, and she sunk back against the hillock with a groan. The dewy grass felt like soothing aloe against her skin, which she had only just realized was flushed with exertion. She felt as if she had been running about for hours, and had only now decided on a rest. It had been years since she'd been required to do something like that.

Perhaps she was more out of practice than she thought.

How long it was before either of them spoke, Hermione didn't know. But at some point after her heart had calmed, and her breathing had slowed to normal, and she felt as though she could melt into the earth, she heard Malfoy shifting in the grass.

"Granger?" he asked.

It didn't sound as though he were about to snark at her, so she responded in kind. "Hm?"

"You... er... saved me."

"Yes, I did."

She kept her eyes closed, the sun blessing her with its warm bath.

"Why?"

Shrugging into the grass, Hermione gave a snort. "Because however else would I be able to repair that wretched mirror?"

Malfoy paused. "It's a Gryffindor thing, isn't it?"

"Hm."

"_I_ think a Featherweight Charm would have been more effective. _Your_ spell of choice nearly wrenched my leg off."

"My hands were starting to slip. You're quite slimy, you know. I mean that literally this time."

"You ought to have Summoned me, then."

"Malfoy?"

"What?"

"Do stop talking."

* * *

><p>Malfoy's dungarees were soaked through as well as entrenched in grime, but he managed to fix them up well enough—his wandwork was not too shabby, Hermione couldn't help but notice. Hermione's own dungarees had stayed dry, as per the spell, so she had only to wring the mud from her hair and renew the spell on Malfoy's boots. He wouldn't allow her anywhere near them until she had explained at least three times what it was she wanted to do, and even then, he watched her mistrustfully.<p>

"It's your own fault you nearly drowned," she told him crossly. "_You_ undid _both _my spells."

"Well, _you_ wanted me to be ravaged by wild beasts! I was only trying to protect myself."

"Yes, 'trying' rather seems to be the key."

"I'm starting in on seven years of bad luck, it isn't my fault!"

"There was no bad-luck curse on that mirror!"

Though Malfoy had recovered faster than she from the whole 'nearly drowning' incident, he had insisted they remain on the hillock for well past a half hour longer. She herself had only required an additional fifteen minutes before her mind started whirring away, adjusting her mental schedule for the time that had been lost. They had only been in the marshes an hour before things had gone so terribly awry, and they had still only gathered the first of five ingredients: meddlin, allegedly fairy-grown—though how something so dimwitted as a fairy could maintain an entire species of plant was a mystery to her. She had had Malfoy cut three of the curlicued stalks with a pair of silver scissors, going counterclockwise from stalk to stalk. He then had to tie them together with one of the plant's long, milky leaves—bound thus, they maintained more of their magical properties when being ground for the salve. Hermione had been rather self-conscious as she explained all this, but Malfoy had said nothing about it. For once, she had been thankful that Malfoy had been Professor Snape's favorite.

They still needed goblin's root—this was the key—mallowsweet, elf-ear mushroom bark, and boggum—preferably dried, though the drying process only took three days under the proper conditions. The mallowsweet would be easy enough to find as long as they were looking specifically for it, and boggum was common enough that, once they came across a hollow log that had fallen into the marsh, they would have to search no longer. Only the goblin's root and the mushroom bark would be more challenging to locate. Elf-ear mushrooms turned invisible if they heard anyone approach, and so would have to be snuck up on before being collected. Goblin's root could be lured aboveground only with real gold; you couldn't leave gold lying about everywhere, though (even if you could afford it—Malfoy refused to contribute), because then it would become skeptical and ignore the gold altogether. There were various important methods of harvesting all of these, of course, once you actually managed to find them.

Hermione was certain they could manage. Harry had helped her the very first time, since he had broken Sirius's mirror by proxy, but after that, when she had begun mostly breaking mirrors herself—removing all bad-luck curses beforehand—she had ventured out to the marshes on her own. She had catalogued where she had found each ingredient every time, but this did not help as much as she had hoped: these particular magical ingredients were rarely found in the same place twice.

"Think mallowsweet," she called over her shoulder to Malfoy, who lagged behind because he feared being sucked into the swampy waters around him more than ever.

"What does that even mean?" Malfoy scowled. "Am I to think _like_ the mallowsweet? Shall I become _one _with the mallowsweet?"

Hermione snorted. "If you'd like. Or, you can useful and picture the mallowsweet in your head."

"What does it look like?"

She sighed. "Perhaps just think the _word _'mallowsweet,' then. If that isn't too difficult for you."

"And if I think about this little mallow thing, it's going to show up, just like—"

Grinning, Hermione came to a stop. "Yes, Malfoy," she said, bending down to inspect the patch of tiny green leaves and sugary-looking flowers that she had suddenly noticed at her feet. "Just like magic."

Malfoy loomed curiously over her shoulder while she cut the mallowsweet, this time with an ordinary knife. The mirror-breaker wasn't required to harvest this one, nor was any special instrument needed—in fact, a special instrument had been known to dull the effects of the mallowsweet, so that the mirror, once repaired, would be slightly less magical than it had been before; in a two-way mirror alone, it could make images a bit foggy about the edges. Hermione explained this rather absently, and she saw Malfoy's shadow nod on the ground beside her.

The boggum was as easy to collect as she had expected. Soon beyond the mallowsweet, a hollow log appeared in their path, half submerged. Hermione told Malfoy to reach inside and feel for a sticky, grainy sort of substance. When he pulled out a handful of something that looked like acid-green, liquefied sphagnum moss, she had recoiled in spite of herself, crying, "Oh, don't touch _that_!" There was a brief period in which Malfoy nearly went into spasms attempting to scrape the goo from his hand, wiggling his appendage about in the water so panicked-like that Hermione nearly fell backward over the log from laughing. In the end, the skin on his hand was dry and cracked from so many _Scourgify_s.

Another two hours passed before Malfoy demanded a second break. Wiping the sweat from her brow, Hermione gladly obliged him. She had watched him out of the corner of her eye for those two hours and had come to the startling conclusion that she didn't mind so much, having him here with her. That was in spite of the time he had nearly run her into a tree because he hadn't noticed she'd stopped walking—he hadn't acknowledged his clumsiness, but had at least had the courtesy to flush a bit as he stared resolutely elsewhere. It was also despite the occasion in which he spooked mightily at a rustling in a close group of bushes, and had clutched at her hand in terror, only to discover a rather startled-looking mouse. (That time, they had both blushed.)

But that was the thing, really. Nature actually did Malfoy good. He wasn't the sort of wild-man type to run off into the wilderness, only to return ten years later with a three-foot-long beard, animal-skin clothing, and an immunity to mosquitoes. When he wasn't starting at every suspicious rattle of wind through the trees, or flinching at buzzing insects, Hermione had seen him start to relax a little. She had seen how he seemed to arch himself toward the sun, as though chlorophyll, not blood, ran through his veins; she had seen his curiosity piqued by odd growth formations in the bog, had seen his steps eventually lighten until once—very briefly, mind—he had reminded her of a deer. Nature did Malfoy good the way it did Hermione. It was all very well to spend your life indoors, but from time to time, you needed to be reminded of that mysterious being, fresh air. She highly doubted that Narcissa Malfoy had allowed her son to scurry up trees like a rabid squirrel throughout his childhood. (As a matter of fact, neither had Hermione's mother, but not because it was undignified; Hermione knew full well from whom she'd inherited her worry streak.)

During their respite, they decided to try their luck with the goblin's root, placing a few Galleons in likely places, such as the crook between two tree roots, or the lee of a weathered stone. Malfoy suggested they leave the ones they had already placed, and scatter a few more elsewhere. To which, of course, Hermione replied that he was welcome to, so long as they were his Galleons they would leave unattended. (He did not seem to understand this at first. "But it will be more efficient this way," he'd insisted.)

Eventually, they settled onto another hillock, from which they could watch all of the Galleons with ease.

"How long will it take?" Malfoy hissed in her ear. The feel of his breath there made her shiver slightly, despite the warmth and dryness of her dungarees.

"It will take as long as it needs to take," she hissed back, though she was sure it didn't have the same effect. Malfoy had his eyes trained on the Galleons, and did not appear to notice her. In fact, for all the noticing she had done of him, she had not caught him noticing much of her. This bothered her, for some reason.

Her troubling line of thought was interrupted when Malfoy suddenly pointed at one of the Galleons, shouting, "There! There! I see one!"

Her eyes found the third Galleon—this being the closest to his outstretched finger—and she searched the dark earth around it. Nothing.

"I don't think—" she began, just as Malfoy said, "Oh."

"Oh?" she echoed.

"Nevermind," he said.

Frowning, she asked what he had seen, but he refused to tell her. In a moment, however, her question was answered: a little brown moth, much the same color as the goblin's root would have been, took flight from beside the third Galleon. She might have poked fun at Malfoy for this—nothing too harsh, of course, for she could see herself making the same mistake with less experience—but his shoulders had slumped in a sad sort of way, as if he were very disappointed that he had not been useful after all.

Hermione considered this. Here they had been, tramping about for hours, and all she had really needed Malfoy to do was cut some weeds and handle a bit of sludge. It was important, yes, but hardly exciting, and hardly something she couldn't have done on her own, had it been she who had broken the mirror. She had teased him about being useless, but perhaps he was actually feeling the brunt of that. Perhaps—in whatever strange, alternate universe this was—Malfoy felt badly about not being able to help more.

Perhaps the large bird that had passed over them a while ago had not been a bird at all, but a flying pig.

She did not discount this theory, exactly. She had not discounted many things since she had learned she was a witch. The world—the true, full world—was an unfathomably bizarre place.

The universe seemed intent upon proving this true, because the next time Malfoy opened his mouth, he said something that Hermione would never in a thousand years have expected. Apparently, Malfoy would not have expected it either, because he spoke haltingly, almost as if the words were beyond his control.

"Do you... do you remember?" he asked her. He was not looking at her, exactly, not at first—more like somewhere over her shoulder. His body was positioned toward hers, though, attuned to her as she was attuned to him. "I mean... that one time...?"

He sounded almost... shy.

But there was no shyness in the way he looked at her then.


	2. Part 2

****Love, Sludge,  
>and Dungarees<strong>**

**Part 2**

Draco's life had been a series of bad days since the war. Unless of course you counted the worst days, which came in a lovely string of their own. The first of those worst days, he had always thought, started with the day Hermione Granger had moved next door.

Well. That was something else he liked to think. Know-it-all Granger had actually been there first—by about three hours. By some sick twist of fate, he and Granger had managed to rent a flat at the same place and the same time without even imagining such a thing were possible. (He did like to imagine that he had signed the lease first, though.)

Mutual warfare was of course declared—though of course, they had been at a petty war with one another almost half their lives. It was not difficult to think of things that would upset her: anything that would interfere with her precious brain time, and whatever so-called 'scholarly work' she happened to be sweating over.

The best solution was noise. Noise created by a lot of people. A lot of noisy people meant a large party. That day was another worst day: the day he decided to throw a party, and reality, instead, gave him a harsh slap across the face.

People were still scared. His friends were still scared. They knew whose house the Dark Lord had invaded in that final year.

So, in true Slytherin style, everyone turned up so fashionably late that they did not turn up at all. He had comforted himself—and, all right, _amused _himself as well—by enchanting various bits of furniture to sound vaguely like people. He was not the best wizard. The armchair kept complimenting his shirt buttons (he was wearing a pullover), and the lamp insisted on challenging him to riddle contests throughout the night; but the other furniture behaved more or less appropriately, though their voices were a little musty. He drowned them out, anyway, with the wireless. Even more satisfyingly, at a particularly late hour, he took his tea kettle and a nearby soup ladle, and began banging the latter against the former in what he supposed was a rather rhythmic beat—at the very least, it went along with the song on the wireless, whose volume he had cranked up as loud as it could go without damaging his sensitive ears.

When all was said and done, though, he was still by himself in his miserable flat, the flat which shared a wall with a woman who hated him.

If he was being honest—which he rarely was, but still—she was probably _the _woman, the one whose hostile attitude toward him affected him most. He could imagine a mob of blurred faces turned angrily toward him, shouting shrilly, but he could pick her face out of the crowd almost without looking.

Granger had always been smarter than him, favored more by the staff, and eventually more well-liked by the students. She had always been better than him at everything—everything but Quidditch, and look how far that had got him after Hogwarts!

He had always been jealous of her, yes, but also—begrudgingly—admiring. He had sought Potter's approval that first day, but really, he later thought, he should have sought Granger's. Even from a purely Slytherin standpoint, befriending her would have been beneficial, in the long run. Potter may have had an innate power in his name, but Granger had earned hers. Everybody knew that.

They just didn't like to admit it, he least of all. She was still bossy and annoying. And you could probably hide things in her hair without her noticing.

Such as an entire hippogriff.

(That would serve her right for being cleverer than him, he thought comfortingly. Hippogriffs were nasty things. They deserved one another. Sort of.)

Several months after the pretend-party incident—which had nearly got him evicted, thank you very much—things had died down.

Things, meaning the outright animosity between him and his neighbor had reduced to a simmering loathing. Things, which he wished included his string of worst days, but didn't—those seemed to have got a second wind.

On the latest worst day, he had been sacked. Rude to the customers, his employer had said.

Draco had promptly redefined the meaning of the word rude in the man's face, and had just barely escaped a restraining order. (A little not-so-secret: it would have been worth it.)

Even with the satisfaction of nearly getting sacked again from a job he no longer had, he was not in a good mood as he stood in the lift—his lift, to the left—to get to his flat, holding an awkward box of trivial belongings. As if to spite him, the lift crawled upward at a flobberworm's pace, possibly moving backward, there was no way to tell. He shifted the box in his arms, searching in it for his wand. Beneath a spare bit of parchment, just by the box of Auntie Elderberry's Excellent Owl Treats—there! Draco grasped his wand. He adjusted the box again so that he could get a firmer grip upon the handle. The lift reached the second floor. Muzak screeched at him cheerily from the speakers. He pointed his wand at the grimy buttons by the lift door, hissed a speed-increasing spell, and BANG! The lift shot up at the very same moment he lost his grip on the box, and it toppled to the floor, projectile-vomiting its contents over every conceivable surface.

Draco was fairly certain his hand-picked selection of words was loud enough to hear all the way in Wiltshire. It wasn't his mother who came running to give him a piece of her mind, though. When the lift doors slammed open, muzak simultaneously wailing and gasping for breath, Draco sitting in the midst of the rubble, it was Granger who stood in the lift entrance.

"_Your_ place is on the _right_," he wanted to snarl at her, but found he couldn't. All he felt capable of doing was locating the nearest wall, so that he might acquaint his head with it repeatedly. First he had been sacked, next his box had been literally sickened by his belongings, and now Granger was going to lecture him on the improper use of several verbs he'd gladly like to repeat to her.

Instead, she said, "Er... I'm going to... _Hey_."

He must have looked pretty pathetic, because the next thing he knew, Granger had stooped down, and was gathering his belongings into her skirt. Normally, he'd have found an occasion for making fun of the skirt—it was long, grey, and pleated, something his grandmother wouldn't have been caught in, and she was already dead—but he was rather flabbergasted at what he was seeing, and didn't think to. Mostly, he watched the way the fabric of the skirt draped over her legs, swaying each time she bent forward. (Her stockings, he noticed, ended at her knee.) Her curly hair sprang about like a mass of springs whenever she moved.

When she had gathered most of the items, she got to her feet—a little wobbly, but she kept her balance—and waited. Draco made a grab for the last few things and shoved them into the mutinous box; then, wordlessly, they padded down the corridor toward his flat. Once he got the door open, there were a few beats of awkwardness, in which neither of them seemed to know what to do; Draco moved closer to the doorframe to let her pass at the same time she stepped back to allow him more room with the box.

At length, Draco ended up placing the box slightly just inside his flat, and Granger crouched in the doorway and emptied her skirt into the box, quite gently, and not without a bit of magic. Almost too soon, she straightened again, not meeting his eye, but not avoiding it, meaning to return to her own flat.

Draco caught her arm as she left. Her skin was soft—though what had he been expecting, scales? (Possibly.)

"Granger."

"Yes?" She did not struggle to escape from his grasp, and it was a bit too long before he let her go.

"—Thank you."

And that was that. That was all. Just a little exchange of kindness and unfamiliar words.

At least, that was what he'd always liked to think. He never did look at her quite the same after that—though he did look at her a lot more often.

* * *

><p>Malfoy told her everything. They hadn't moved much, and yet they seemed so much closer than Hermione remembered them being. She glanced briefly down at her hands, and saw them positioned to move her forward, to push her into some kind of motion that had yet to concretely form. Malfoy seemed only partially aware of himself, as well. If she could have drawn a straight line out from one of her fingertips, it would have intersected with one of his. She imagined multiple fingertips with multiple lines, reaching, crossing, weaving, an entire network of touch without actually touching. She could <em>feel <em>it. From his words, Malfoy could feel it too, even if he didn't picture it quite the same.

Before she knew it, Malfoy was leaning forward. Her heart pounded wildly—what to do, what to do? Malfoy was—he—

Malfoy had noticed her, after all. Hermione struggled to grasp this, what it meant. She wasn't sure. Her own feelings were muddled, jumbled: triumph, fear, happiness, regret. She wanted to jump into their midst and sort them into categories that would make sense to her.

"Granger, I..." He sounded frustrated.

She was going to pass out. Hermione was not the sort of woman who fainted, but her heart was beating so _fast_, like a little bird's, there couldn't possibly be enough blood flowing into her brain to keep her conscious.

"...I rather care about you, all right?"

Later, Hermione would recall that several things then happened at once. One, Malfoy tried to kiss her. Two, this excited and terrified her so much that she stumbled backward in her confliction. Three, a goblin's root peeped out of the ground near the first Galleon.

Her terrified side taking over, Hermione scrambled toward the goblin's root, slipping and sliding as though she were making her way across a wet floor, and leaving a very affronted Malfoy behind. He even made a small choking sound as she fled.

She thought the escape would make her feel better, but it only made her feel worse. She should not have left. She should have let Malfoy kiss her, because that was what she really wanted, deep down. Or not so deep. Maybe it had been brimming at the surface this entire time, waiting for the walls of her resistance to truckle to its power.

Just as she had the gnarled brown root swinging from her hand, she nearly dropped it again.

She rather cared about Malfoy, too.

In fact, she was pretty sure she had gone and fallen in love with him. She was aghast. All that observing, all that interest—all of that had led to _this_! Perhaps she cared for him too much, too soon, maybe even more than he cared for her, but she couldn't deny how she felt. Because she had never felt this way before, had never fallen in love with anyone.

_Merlin_, what was she doing? Why hadn't she let him kiss her? She wanted it so badly, why had she stopped it? She wanted to kiss him, and comfort him every time he dropped things in the lift, and talk about the merits of certain potions ingredients above others, and let him know that he was a better person than he thought he was.

With all this in mind and heart, Hermione whirled round.

Malfoy was gone; the hillock was empty. She didn't even notice the frog until it had hopped almost completely past her, and even then, she only paid it any heed because she was growing desperate, and she rarely ever discounted anything.

But sure enough, there was a little patch of silvery-yellow on top of the frog's green and brown head, and its eyes were strangely grey if you saw them at the right angle.

Aghast, Hermione attempted to pick it up.

The frog, wanting none of that, hopped away.

"It's me, you dolt!" she shouted after it—him. The frog continued to hop, each spiteful leap increasing the distance between them, though Hermione ran as fast as she could to try and catch up. It was difficult, navigating around rocks and pools of water, and more than enough fallen logs to repair ten mirrors. Apparently, being a frog gave you an advantage at that sort of thing, and made you relatively fearless, too—even if you _were _normally a coward.

A coward who confessed his feelings to the woman who bravely ran away. Right.

She carried on, curls bouncing, sweating under her dungarees.

It was only a few seconds after she realized Malfoy had disappeared that she discovered she was falling.

And really, how difficult is it to notice a fifteen-foot-deep pit open up in the ground right in front of you?

Apparently, _very_.

* * *

><p>The good news was that she found Malfoy in the bottom of the pit—and by found, she meant that she almost landed on him and squashed him into jelly as she bounced otherwise harmlessly to the ground. Malfoy had the good sense to hop out of the way.<p>

The bad news—besides the fact that Malfoy was still a frog, and still appeared to be upset with her—was that, even though she had her wand, it didn't seem to work. The bog and its surrounding environs were magic, yes, but Hermione had always considered it to be plant magic. That was what she always came here for, wading across an endless stretch of marshy growth. The only animals she had ever encountered had been non-magical, and though she knew they must be there, somewhere, the fact that they lurked invisibly made it seem as though they did not exist at all, and lessened any sense of danger. How far she had come since the war! How far, how fallen—and how _stupid _she felt for underestimating her surroundings! Though of all the times she had been here, never once had anything particularly threatening occurred; now, she had saved Malfoy from drowning; seen—or almost seen—him change species, which was probably a result of him touching something he shouldn't have; and had got them both stuck in a lovely, dank hole impervious to magic.

Oh, and she was also in love with a frog. She mustn't forget that. She mustn't forget that she barely knew him, even after seven years of schooling, several years of loathing, plus today, which seemed to count as several more. Frog though he may have been, every time she looked at him now, huddled by a shallow puddle, her heart gave a distinct _thump_. Just one, just enough to remind her that perhaps she was insane, and that she liked it that way.

Hermione supposed that being insane was supposed to help you pass the time, but her mind was sharper than ever in that pit, and it did nothing to dull the agonizingly slow existence she had discovered there. Her thoughts became racing internal monologues; she constructed plans and theories about how she might escape, and then spent thrice as long meticulously disproving them. She looked at Malfoy a lot and, she noticed, she did sigh a lot, too.

The last of the afternoon sun eventually faded into the twilight of evening. Though the sky above her still seemed somewhat light, that light no longer fell into the pit after her. Shadows seemed to drown her. For a while, she feared irrationally that Malfoy had left her there, that he had somehow managed to escape without indicating this to her—she couldn't see him, after all, so how could she know? _Lumos _didn't work here. Hermione wasn't frightened of the dark, but the loneliness of a solitary adventure was not something she was used to.

Hermione swallowed, gritted her teeth, and raised her chin. _This _misadventure was not about to get the better of her, no matter what happened. (Though, truth be told, she felt much better after she stretched out her leg, and her foot poked something that gave a disgruntled croak.)

Late in the night, Hermione woke to a small point of light in front of her eyes. She had managed to fall asleep at some point she could not recall—the pit was warm, at least. At first, she was groggy and befuddled. Then, the light flitted away from her, and she saw—though she had to blink several times—many more little lights, floating in the air like dreams. Fireflies! Hermione was amazed. She had seen them so very few times, and never in England. It was only the middle of spring, not nearly estival enough for them to survive. Yet survive they seemed to be doing. Perhaps they were a magical sub-species that had yet to go extinct. She looked up. There were none above; they were all in the pit with her, all of them captured in a glass jar. She reached out a hand to wake Malfoy, and then remembered he wasn't human anymore.

He _was _beside her, though, she noticed with a start. The fireflies' glow revealed a vaguely frog-shaped bump nestled into the folds of her dungarees at her knee. Hermione's heart gave a little start to see this. Not necessarily from affection, though she couldn't deny that was there. It was mostly pity. She was warm, but was he? He was probably having a terrible night, and it was sure to be killing his pride to have to curl up against her, especially because he was so upset with her. (With good reason, she thought.)

Well. If his pride was already at a low point, she was just going to have to add insult to injury. It was for his own good, after all. Ignoring his sleepy _ribbit _of protest, Hermione cupped the frog in her hands and held him cradled over her lap. He bounced about between her palms for a bit, attempting to escape, but Hermione held him fast. He felt somewhere between sticky and slimy against her skin, and Hermione could feel his heart beat against her, slow but erratic.

"Calm down!" she hissed. "You'll only hurt yourself."

Malfoy appeared to understand her, because he stopped his hopping at once, and merely shuffled about a bit. When Hermione opened her hands slightly to check on him, he made no move to leave, so she opened them up wider. He stayed, though all that shuffling had made it so his back was turned sulkily to her.

One of the fireflies strayed closer to them, turning lazy loops.

"It's so lovely," Hermione murmured. "These are quite rare, Malfoy, surely even you—"

Before she could finish her sentence, Malfoy-the-frog's tongue shot out, and the firefly was no more. Hermione turned her hand so that she could look at Malfoy. His eyes were wide with horror and disbelief. If possible, he had turned even greener.

Hermione laughed, and then bit her lip. "You had better hope those aren't poisonous to frogs. They are to some vertebrates, you know." At the expression on his face, she hastily added, "I'm sure you'll be fine, though. You're still technically human." (She hoped.) "I don't think they're harmful to us."

That was probably because humans never ate fireflies. There were many things you just didn't do in the name of science.

At length, the fireflies began to wink out one by one, and Malfoy burrowed into the front pocket of Hermione's dungarees.

She had never known frogs could snore.

* * *

><p>When Hermione woke the next morning, she felt terribly stiff. She had not curled onto the ground to sleep, but rather had remained with her back ramrod straight against the wall of the pit, her legs out together in front of her. She stretched, rubbed at her neck. Leaves had fallen into her hair again. Her mouth felt dry, but she didn't fancy drinking out of the dirty puddle. By the greyness of the sky above her, and the chill mist that pricked at her skin, she determined that it was quite early; the sun might not even be properly up yet.<p>

Yawning, she put a hand to her pocket—the one Malfoy was in.

Except that Malfoy wasn't in it.

She searched her other pockets, shaking at all the fabric of her dungarees, but she felt no frog-shaped lumps anywhere. Eyes on her feet to make certain she didn't step on him, she stood up, then looked around the pit. She couldn't find him.

"This isn't funny, Malfoy," she warned.

She scoured every inch, but Malfoy simply wasn't there. He had left her after all. But how?

In spite of the sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach, she was still determined. If he had found a way to escape, then so could she. She would not allow herself to be outsmarted by a frog. She had already established to herself that she was going to maintain at least some shred of dignity in this whole affair.

Pacing, she began to think. Objects could fall into the pit well enough, but the pit was too deep for anything to climb out of it. You couldn't magic your way out, because the pit seemed to cancel out any spells. It had to be possible to leave, though, because the fireflies had been able to fly away without any difficultly. She had felt, last night, that they were all contained within a glass jar, but if that was the case, the jar had no lid. There was nothing to prevent her from leaving, so long as she could get to the top of the pit. She couldn't merely Apparate out; she would have to climb. Could she do it, though? She visualized herself carving hand- and footholds into the earthen walls, scrambling up them, and getting stuck halfway up. Either that, or she would get far, and then fall. The fall wouldn't kill her—it hadn't before, hadn't even hurt her—but she wasn't about to starve to death at the bottom of a hole because she was too physically uncoordinated to climb out.

Perhaps, though, the _entire _pit wasn't magic-canceling. Perhaps that barrier ended a certain ways up, and once she climbed that high, she would be able to use magic to get the rest of the way out. But at what point would this occur? How would she know?

Suddenly, Hermione heard a splash, and then felt her leg sinking slightly. She had paced right on into the puddle she had spotted earlier. Only, the puddle was a lot deeper than she'd thought, for water was lapping at her ankle.

Hermione stopped. Could it be? Quickly, she withdrew her foot from the puddle, crouched down on its banks, and stuck her hand into the water. It came up just below her elbow. Her boot, however, had only been immersed to the ankle. She returned her foot to the puddle in order to confirm this, putting all her weight onto it. Sure enough, she sunk down only to her ankle. When she bounced on her one leg, the bottom of her boot did not hit against the bottom of the puddle; rather, it felt as though she were kicking off from something almost gelatinous in texture—something that wasn't hard or solid, and yet acted as though it were.

The magic in her boots was working. There was not a point where the magic-inhibitor merely stopped; rather, there was a chink in its armor, and Hermione had found it.

Full of triumph, Hermione got both feet into the puddle, and Apparated herself to the ground outside of the pit with a loud _crack!_

The sound startled her a bit, partly because she hadn't been one hundred percent positive it would work, and partly because it had been so quiet for the several hours. And it was partly for these reasons, and partly because the _crack! _still rang in her ears that she didn't hear the croaking at first. It may have even been because she had got used to the sound while deep in the pit.

When she did notice it, however, it was nearly as loud as her Apparition had been. Slowly, slowly, Hermione looked around, and finally found herself faced with an entire pool full of frogs just a few steps into the marsh.

And it _was_ full, this pool. Hundreds of frogs seemed to be shouting at her all at once as they stared up at her with wide eyes. In fact, she could hardly see the water, and half only assumed it must be there. Frogs were piled around each other, on top of each other, squirming and being tossed about like living waves. It was as though every frog in the surrounding marsh had been Summoned to this particular place, whether they wanted to be or not. During several shocked minutes, Hermione observed them; not one left, though they seemed to be trying, and all croaked and _ribbit_ed at her piteously. It was like the pit, she realized. They were stuck!

Her heart lurched. She knew that Malfoy must be there somewhere amidst the roiling mass of frogs.

Hermione called his name, again and again. She tried to look at all the frogs, but it was simply an impossible feat. They moved constantly, or were covered up to their eyes by water, mud, or other frogs. There was no way for her find the little green and brown frog with a silvery patch on its head and sometimes-grey eyes. If Malfoy were trying to get to her, she wouldn't be able to tell, because he would only be one struggling frog amongst hundreds. Hermione tried looking into their eyes—the ones she could see—but they were all the normal colors, and all seemed to plead for her help. And it wasn't as if he could call attention to himself by making noise—all of the frogs were already cacophonous together.

Hermione tried a determined "_Accio Draco Malfoy_!" but, as she expected, that didn't work, either.

"I don't know what to _do_," she groaned aloud.

"Ribbit," replied the frog closest to her.

"Ribbit ribbit," confirmed another.

"Rrrrrriiiiiibbit rrrrrrriiiiibbit. Ribbit," insisted the next.

The frogs continued to ribbit at her unhelpfully. At this rate, she was never going to find Malfoy, never going to figure out the counter-curse, never going to apologize for running away, never going to confess how she actually felt.

"Ribbit rrrrrrriiiiibbit rrrrrrriiiiibbit ribbit," said a frog. "Ribbit ribbit. Rrrrrriiiiiibbit ribbit rrrrrrriiiiibbit ribbit. Rrrrrriiiiiibbit ribbit rrrrrrriiiiibbit... Rrrrrriiiiiibbit rrrrrrriiiiibbit. Ribbit."

The frog annoyed her. She was sure it was only one frog making all of that noise—noise which made it difficult to think. Quick to think of solutions, ha! She couldn't even figure out how to find a frog when it was staring her in the face.

"Rrrrrriiiiiibbit ribbit rrrrrrriiiiibbit ribbit. Ribbit ribbit ribbit ribbit. Rrrrrriiiiiibbit rrrrrrriiiiibbit rrrrrrriiiiibbit. Rrrrrriiiiiibbit rrrrrrriiiiibbit rrrrrrriiiiibbit. Ribbit ribbit ribbit. Ribbit."

"Just be _quiet_!" Hermione snapped. This frog was the only one she could hear now. It was so much more obnoxious than the others, so much more—

"Rrrrrriiiiiibbit rrrrrrriiiiibbit. Ribbit."

Hermione sat bolt upright.

"Ribbit rrrrrriiiiiibbit ribbit ribbit. Rrrrrriiiiiibbit rrrrrrriiiiibbit rrrrrrriiiiibbit. Ribbit ribbit ribbit rrrrrrriiiiibbit. Ribbit... Rrrrrriiiiiibbit rrrrrrriiiiibbit. Ribbit."

Unless she was mistaken, normal frogs didn't _ribbit_ in Morse Code. They didn't say things like, _Pick me._ They probably wouldn't say things like, _Choose me_, either. And they definitely never, ever said—Hermione gulped—_Love me_.

"Keep talking!" Hermione cried, a bit flushed. "I can hear you!"

"_Honestly Granger, if you don't hurry up_," the disembodied voice of frog-Malfoy _ribbit_ed in relief.

"Where are you?"

"_Left_!"

She quickly surveyed the left side of the frog heap, and for a moment, she saw him. Then he disappeared again.

"Get where I can see you," she said.

"_I am trying_!" There was a pause, then he _ribbit_ed again.

In spite of the situation, Hermione put her hands on her hips. "That had better not have been directed at me," she snapped. "And anyway, you spelled it wrong."

With a throaty croak of rage, Malfoy leapt three feet into the air—and Hermione saw him. This was so high, in fact, that several of the frogs below him gawped with interest and perhaps a bit of admiration. Hermione seized her chance—literally. As Malfoy began to plummet back down to earth, she snatched him away to safety. He gave a sound of protest as she unceremoniously stuffed him into his nest in the pocket of her dungarees. Any reunion would have to wait. Hermione had frogs to save.

* * *

><p>With the last frog hopping gratefully away into the marsh, Hermione sat back on her heels and wiped her sweaty brow with the back of her hand. Catching four hundred and twenty-seven frogs had been a lot more difficult than she'd supposed, especially when most of them hadn't seemed to understand that she was trying to help them. More than once, she had tripped and fallen—though thankfully, not <em>onto<em> anyone—in her pursuit of a particular hostage. She never, ever wanted to touch, see, or hear that many frogs again. Malfoy could have helped her, of course, had she chosen to change him back, and he chosen to dirty his hands and _work_. She had checked all the other frogs for enchantments, reversing any she found, and sending several house pets and one confused man to refuge. Even with Malfoy's help, these tasks would have taken over an hour—though cutting the time in half, she had to admit.

Even so, Hermione had studiously ignored his Morse Code _ribbit_ings, carrying on by herself. She had thought of what she would say to him for hours and hours, going over it in her head, but actually _telling _him, speaking the words out loud... She didn't think she could face it just yet. That was selfish of her, she knew. But there was such a large part of her that had always striven toward perfection; she was afraid that if she looked Malfoy in the eye and opened her mouth, something stupid and grotesque would tumble out before she could stop it, or even take it back. When you wrote something—an essay, a letter, a memo—you could always read it over before anyone else saw it, correcting misspellings, improper grammar, and unclear, imperfect thoughts. In writing, you could craft something. Speaking was different. You could not erase or cross out intangible words—not without a Memory Charm, and she abhorred those almost over the Unforgivables.

Hermione needed the right words, and she needed to be ready to say them. She couldn't go about it lightly. She had hated this man for over seven years, beginning before he was any kind of man at all—including the brief sojourn he had spent as a ferret. She felt she ought to at least be able to explain herself.

Oh dear. She was going to have to do a lot of explaining in the future, wasn't she?

The sun beat down upon her, and she closed her eyes briefly. When she opened them again, she felt stronger.

"All right," she whispered to herself. "All right."

Delicately, she took Malfoy from her pocket and placed him on the ground in front of her. He didn't hop away, which was something.

It only took a simple counter-curse, and Malfoy the young man was there again, fully-clothed and crouched on all fours as he had been only a week ago. Like last time, their noses were almost touching. Neither of them scrambled back, but Malfoy withdrew coldly before Hermione could speak.

"Took you long enough," he said. "I'd like to leave now."

She stood. "Yes, we can—"

He stopped her. "No. Not 'we.' _I'm_ going. Oh. Here..." He dug in his pocket, then tossed something to her.

She scrambled to catch it, only just managing. Her hand-eye coordination had never been exemplary. When she saw what he had thrown at her, she furrowed her brow.

"That's the last thing, isn't it?" he said tonelessly. "The elf-ear mushroom. I found it last night. You know. When I was stuck as a frog. You were sleeping. You were sleeping when I got Summoned into that cesspool, too." Only then did his voice take on a note of accusation.

"Malfoy, I'm _sorry_."

"Well, good for you. I'm going." He turned from her.

"Don't you _dare _leave!" she shouted at him. Even to her own ears, she sounded shrill. "I've still got something to say!"

"Isn't that a miracle." He didn't turn around.

"Malfoy, I—_bleuahhh_."

Hermione clapped her hands over her mouth. That was all that had come out! _Bleuahhh_! It was her absolute worst nightmare. She had never told a man she loved him before, and now that she had finally got the courage, it seemed she didn't have the words.

But her monosyllabic 'confession,' it seemed, was something Malfoy could not resist. Looking at her over his shoulder, his brow arched, he asked, "_Bleuahhh_? Really, Granger? That's your big, profound, parting thought?"

"No! It most certainly is _not_!" Hermione could feel her cheeks burning—no, her whole face, her entire body. She was on fire, and it wasn't all because of passion. She was absolutely humiliated. This _was _supposed to be her grand moment. She considered running away again, but the Gryffindor in her revolted against this—one cowardly moment was enough.

She tried again. "It's just that I'm—It's just that I—_bleuahhh_—oh, _bother_ that! I _love _you, you stupid prat!"

She was pleased to note that Malfoy's cheeks went scarlet, too.

"So... So there," she finished lamely, crossing her arms. "I thought you ought to know. Before you left. Now—go, if you want."

Hermione was pretty sure that this was all the opposite of perfect. Firstly, her word choice was less than ideal. Secondly, she would have preferred not to choose such words while they were both wearing dungarees and covered in sludge. Malfoy's jaw was touched with a fine-colored stubble, and part of his hair was so slicked up with mud that it looked like a duck tail; and she thought there were probably things nesting on top of her own head.

Thirdly, it was a little funny when somebody kissed you, and his lips tasted rather froggy.

But at least that meant, as you kissed him back, that he didn't really mind the first two things at all. Because it also meant that he loved you, too.

THE END


End file.
